Can AI inspire higher journalistic standards?
Trust in journalists is at an all-time low.
The Reuters Institute’s 2024 Digital News Report pegs trust in UK news at 33%, down from 34% in 2022 and a steep drop from 51% in 2015. Gallup’s 2023 survey found that only 32% of Americans have a "great deal" or "fair amount" of confidence in the media to report news fully, accurately, and fairly. In 1976, that number was 72%. Pew Research in 2022 showed similar erosion globally, with trust dropping in 23 of 27 countries surveyed since 2016.
There are plenty of reasons for the erosion of trust in journalism: one is a perception that some journalists sacrifice accuracy for narrative potency. CanDo wondered whether AI could be used to determine and publish the accuracy of individual journalists’ reporting. We commissioned independent technologist Matt Collins to investigate. Ultimately we concluded that LLMs can provide a useful indicator of journalistic integrity, though the current cost of necessary data access and compute is non-trivial (perhaps tens of £thousands per year for the UK alone).
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